Telfer Stokes was born in St Ives, Cornwall, shortly after the outbreak of World War II. His mother, influencial painter and sculptor Margaret Mellis, and his father, the art critic Adrian Stokes, were part of the wartime artistic community of St Ives.

Telfer left his parent's influence aged six, obsessed by the nearby railway in Carbis Bay, his interest in heavy engineering having been ignited. Creativity was in the blood.

His art education was consolidated when he attended the Slade School of Art. He was awarded a Beckmann Fellowship to do a postgraduate at Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York in 1962. Telfer's move to New York radically transformed his painting. Colour, surface, form and scale became predominant within a series of paintings he made during this time.

In the early seventies he started to produce Artists Books. Initially by himself, later in collaboration with others, Telfer collected his visual material together with the creative freedom and critical reception that drove him to set up his own imprint WeProductions, in 1972.

Telfer founded the imprint Weproductions and published 20 Artist Books between 1972-2002, some in collaboration with Book Artist Helen Douglas.

His eventual need to physically make work later manifested itself in the form of sculpture, in particular welded steel. It has been these playful constructions made from industrial components, cleverly re-configured to confound their original purpose that Telfer has been making and exhibiting in recent years. He keeps the original powder coated painted surfaces as intact as the welding process permits, creating a singular wall work, so harmonious that the colour is often the only clue left to trace back what each component used to be.

Telfer explains: "The different bits, which remain identified separately by their different colours, patinas, still combine to constitute a unified whole, because of the way that I approach constructing - constrained to a certain extent by what I find in the search for the material in the scrap yard, but at the same time finding and conceiving a new context for these bits and pieces. On a good day a certain logic connects chosen pieces of metal".

Telfer started to make Sculptural objects in 2008 and exhibited at Kettles Yard Open in Cambridge the same year. He has followed this up with exhibitions at North House Gallery, Manningtree, Essex 2010 & 2013, Austin / Desmond Fine Art London 2015, and The Redfern Gallery, London 2018.